Is Public Joint Stock Company Uralkali’s (MCX:URKA) 21% ROCE Any Good?

Simply Wall St
January 10, 2019

Today we’ll look at Public Joint Stock Company Uralkali (MCX:URKA) and reflect on its potential as an investment.
Specifically, we’ll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), since that will give us an insight into how efficiently the business can generate profits from the capital it requires.

Firstly, we’ll go over how we calculate ROCE.
Second, we’ll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies.
Finally, we’ll look at how its current liabilities affect its ROCE.

What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business.
Generally speaking a higher ROCE is better.
Overall, it is a valuable metric that has its flaws.
Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since ‘No two businesses are exactly alike.’

Does Uralkali Have A Good ROCE?

ROCE can be useful when making comparisons, such as between similar companies.
It appears that Uralkali’s ROCE is fairly close to the Chemicals industry average of 19%.
Independently of how Uralkali compares to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms appears decent, and the company may be worthy of closer investigation.

MISX:URKA Last Perf January 10th 19

When considering this metric, keep in mind that it is backwards looking, and not necessarily predictive.
ROCE can be deceptive for cyclical businesses, as returns can look incredible in boom times, and terribly low in downturns.
This is because ROCE only looks at one year, instead of considering returns across a whole cycle.
If Uralkali is cyclical, it could make sense to check out this freegraph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect Uralkali’s ROCE?

Liabilities, such as supplier bills and bank overdrafts, are referred to as current liabilities if they need to be paid within 12 months.
The ROCE equation subtracts current liabilities from capital employed, so a company with a lot of current liabilities appears to have less capital employed, and a higher ROCE than otherwise.
To counteract this, we check if a company has high current liabilities, relative to its total assets.

Uralkali has total assets of US$8.3b and current liabilities of US$2.9b.
Therefore its current liabilities are equivalent to approximately 35% of its total assets.
With this level of current liabilities, Uralkali’s ROCE is boosted somewhat.

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.

Simply Wall St is a financial technology startup focused on providing unbiased, high-quality research coverage on every listed company in the world. Our research team consists of equity analysts with a public, market-beating track record. Learn more about the team behind Simply Wall St.

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